Since I read My Lady Jane by Cynthia Hand, Brodi Ashton, and Jodi Meadows and loved it, I thought of this one when I was between books recently and decided to download the audiobook and listen to it while doing housework a few weekends ago. By the way, the narrator does a fantastic job, so if you get the chance, I highly recommend listening to these on audio.
It’s every bit as much fun as My Lady Jane, which I thought only had The Princess Bride references because of the medieval setting, but this one has at least a couple references to The Princess Bride as well, so now I’m expecting this to be a running theme throughout these books.
This book is kind of a retelling of Jane Eyre and an alternate history of Charlotte Brontë’s life mashed together, plus a ghost story. It sounds like a lot, and I’m sure it was interesting trying to get all the different storylines to work together, but work they did.
The premise of the story is that Jane Eyre was one of Charlotte’s teachers at Lowood. They were also friends, but Charlotte doesn’t know that Jane can see ghosts. Jane learned at a very early age not to tell anyone she can she ghosts or react to ghosts in any way because people tend to think other people who can see things they can’t are crazy.
That all gets upended when Jane finds herself at an inn not far from the school when a ghost appears and starts making a menace of herself. That’s when two agents with the Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits show up and capture the ghost in a pocket watch. Jane is horrified because her best friend is a ghost and she would never lock her best friend in a pocket watch. Jane manages to pretend for most of the time that she can’t see the ghost, but gives herself away as the agents are preparing to leave.
As it turns out, not everyone can see ghosts, so people who can are very valuable, especially to a secret society that tracks down and captures ghosts. So one of the agents, Alexander Blackwood, tracks down Jane to a) confirm she can see ghosts and b) offer her a job with the Royal Society for the Relocation of Wayward Spirits.
But, as previously mentioned, her best friend is a ghost, and after the horrific display she saw at the inn, she decides she wants nothing to do with the Society.
Instead, she takes a job as a governess, insisting that it’s always been her greatest dream to be a governess… ever since she saw the advertisement at least.
So, she heads off to be a governess, and you know how most of the story goes from there. Except Jane’s best friend who’s a ghost (whose name is Helen) is always with Jane and always talking to Jane because no one else can see or hear her. Helen provides much of the comic relief as she points out all of Rochester’s icky qualities and wonders if Jane hit her head when she swoons over him.
Meanwhile, we learn that the other agent working with Blackwood is none other than Branwell Brontë. Far from the supposed literary mastermind who was really writing all the books his sisters wrote and published, Branwell is very nice and well loved by his sisters but a complete fuckup. He literally cannot do anything right and it’s hilarious.
Branwell is the one who tells Charlotte about Alexander offering Jane a job, which prompts Charlotte to go to Alexander and offer her services to the Society. But Charlotte cannot see ghosts. The only valuable thing she has is her friendship with Jane Eyre, so she tells Alexander that she’ll talk Jane into taking the job. But of course, once they get to Thornfield Hall, not only does Jane refuse to take the job no matter how much money they offer her (a stupid high amount of money for the time), but Charlotte quickly realizes that Jane is in love with Mr. Rochester, which means there’s no way they can convince her to leave.
In this version, when Jane realizes that Rochester is already married and he asks her to stay with him anyway, even if it’s just as friends, she refuses, but rather than let her go, he puts a pearl necklace on her. The necklace is a talisman, which means that, like the pocket watch, it holds a ghost. If your bare skin touches a talisman, the ghost can possess you, so once the necklace touches Jane, she gets possessed by a ghost who agrees to marry Rochester.
When Charlotte and Alexander burst into the church with Rochester’s brother-in-law to declare that Rochester is still married, Jane surprises everyone by saying she doesn’t care. She’ll marry Rochester anyway. There’s a scuffle and the necklace breaks, ending the possession and allowing Jane to take control of her body again.
Jane is understandably upset at the way Rochester treated her, but it turns out it wasn’t really Mr. Rochester. Or, it was, it was just a different Mr. Rochester. It was the spirit of his dead brother inhabiting his body and making him do all those awful things. The real Mr. Rochester is very much in love with his wife, who is being kept in the attic to keep her out of the way while the ghostly Mr. Rochester helps the Duke of Wellington take control of the RSRWS and the British government.
That’s a whole other story I’m not even going to get into because you really should read it for yourself to find out how it ends. Not only is the book hilarious and packed with action and mystery, but it’s also full of references, not only to Jane Eyre, but to Charlotte Brontë’s life. You’ll still enjoy the book even if you don’t know anything about Charlotte’s life, but you’ll get more enjoyment out of the jokes if you do know a fair amount about her life.
I thoroughly enjoyed every minute of this audiobook and I can’t wait to read the rest of the series!